The Forbidden Courtship of Seattle’s Laboring Class
A satirical poem recounts the trials of a young couple forbidden by their employer from speaking while working on his land.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
John and Maud worked for a man who owned tracts of land. John plowed his fields, while Maud was hired for her board and clothing. The owner, seeing them together, made them take a solemn, iron-clad oath that while they worked for him, they would act like strangers. They labored under his watchful eye until John, losing heart, took to drink. But Maud, under the owner's care, grew 'pert and saucy.' When the owner eventually proposed to her, she turned him down. Later, the narrator saw Maud with a broom, shooing John away, suggesting even the fondest love can die under the weight of toil and disappointment.
“The fondest love will sometimes die. And of all sad facts none can begin with him who yields himself to gin.”
This 1876 verse captures the intense precarity of the 19th-century laborer, whose entire life—even their romantic autonomy—was often subsumed by the person who owned their place of work. It echoes the modern struggle where the power dynamics of the workplace increasingly bleed into the personal lives of workers.
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